Former NXT star Derrick Bateman talks about his WWE release and working for Vince

Former WWE star Michel Hutter, a.k.a. Derrick Bateman, recently appeared on Wrestling Heels Radio. Here are some highlights from the interview.

What a week at NXT is like: “Well, it’s a secret of the pros. I’m kidding, it’s pretty basic. Monday, Tuesday, you have a day of practice and then – back in the day it used to be Wednesday would be promo class or art of communicating, they like to call it. Thursdays would be a show at the arena and then Friday, Saturday maybe we have shows. If we don’t we might have a little practice and this would repeat every week. It’d be pretty much the same.”

What talent has to go through in promo class: “Real brief, just being able to communicate in a way that is current to how they would like it, current to the norm. So as opposed to back in the day of promo being a guy screaming about something and just basically telling a story with the amount of time you have. You just wanna tell a story, [which is] pretty much the gist of everything we do. We tell stories. Being able to communicate in a creative way certainly helps. The thing about a promo class is it’s a way you can try something, see if it works. If it works, cool. If it doesn’t, you can try something else and you kinda have free reign to pick and choose what you wanna do sometimes, and that’s always cool to have an open forum for your own amusement.”

His WWE release: “Yeah, I had a pretty – I don’t know how far it was, but I was doing the Mr. USA [promos], and had some guy on computer making those. That was something that was going to happen and almost didn’t a couple times, but unfortunately, in a Saturday Morning Slam match with Antonio Cesaro, I hurt my knee again and I had to have surgery on it. Then that match with Alex Riley was my first match back from having that surgery. So after the injury, you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind and things happen.

“There’s no regrets from me on my part of what I’ve done. I can regret getting hurt at an inopportune time or two, or I can regret maybe not pushing hard enough to talk to somebody. But I have really no regrets for anything I’ve done in the ring or outside of it, or the entertaining stuff I try to do. No regrets at all with that.”

Working for Vince McMahon: “Well, he’s always super busy with business and things at hand, like with Raw and Smackdown, but there were more than a few times I got to see him in Gorilla for NXT Redemption. I don’t know if you recall the time I had my mom there and was talking smack to Maxine, but walking out with my mom in Gorilla and you see the boss sitting there and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God is this really happening? That is insane!’ And you walk back and he’s laughing and, shoots ya a thumbs up, and that’s pretty much an awesome endorsement, and you’re like ‘cool.’

“As far as him being like hands-on with anything we did, he was busy with the real stuff but, I never had a bad experience with him. He was always super cool every time I got to talk to him and shake his manly hand, so no ill will.”